So a trope that often shows up in fiction is something like this:
Person A: Wow, this is quite a dilemma we are in. How will we ever resolve this problem?
Person B: Well… we could (blackmail someone/use our psychic powers in an evil way/commit a crime/do something else unethical and underhanded)
Person A: We can’t do that! (We’re better than that/if we do that, we’re no better than them/then we will turn to the dark side of the force)
IE, someone proposes a solution to a problem which seems like it might work, but which moves previously mostly-good characters into a morally worse area than they were before.
I’ve feel like I’ve seen plenty of times where person A wins the argument, and they don’t do that bad thing. And plenty of times where person B either wins the argument or just goes ahead and does it, with the predictable result that either it doesn’t work, or it does work but at far too high a cost, as person A warned.
Can anyone think of a situation in which they go ahead and do person B’s underhanded scheme… and it gets them out of the current situation, and then does NOT end up having lingering evil side effects or anything. Perhaps even we end up seeing person A saying “you know, I still feel guilty about that… but I’m glad we made that decision”?
Sisko on DS9 did stuff like that, at least a couple of times…although, if I recall correctly, once it was played off more like “tee-hee, we’re so naughty” (and didn’t actually have much in the way of collateral damage), but the other notable time was much bleaker, with Sisko having somewhat of a crisis of conscience.
No…wait…
Starting off not so much as a dilemma but as a very problematic scenario - Jeffrey in Blue Velvet wants to find out what the hell is going on with the ear, Dorothy the singer and Frank the psycho, and hopes to resolve the problem by trying to persuade the squeaky-clean-as-Calgonite Sandy to help him snoop into (at first) Dorothy’s life, but then in the course of events, Frank’s, as well. Sandy lets herself get swept up in Jeffrey’s snoopings, which I’d regard as “unethical and underhanded”, basically because it isn’t any of their business, not to mention Sandy being totally aware she’s being drawn in to danger.
This example veers a little bit more from the OP, though, in that the net result isn’t so much them getting out of any current situation, but more a tidy resolution of finally figuring out all the connections between Dorothy and Frank, leading to the eventual reunion of Dorothy and her kidnapped son, and a bullet hole through Frank the fucker’s head.
Here’s why I brought it up (week-old spoilers for X-Men TV show The Gifted ahead):
So, on the TV show The Gifted, there was a dilemma. One mutant has the ability to open portals between different places. All of the mutants (generally, the good guys) need her to be able to do this in order to effect a rescue. But her power is inconsistent. So, a second mutant (with the ability to mess with memories) gives her a memory of having been in love with one of the mutants being rescued, giving her an added incentive to do the portalling. A third mutant warns the second mutant against using her power in this way, it’s invasive, it’s unethical, etc.
So the first step worked out (the added incentive did let the rescue go off). And it struck me that I’d love it if when the first mutant finds out what happened, her response is to say “well, that’s pretty fucked up, but, you know, it was necessary, and it worked. But please don’t do it again.” and they just leave it at that, rather than there being some big Consequences.
Columbo of course routinely conned murderers into revealing their guilt, which doesn’t count – but as good as he was at that aspect of his job, he was a lousy shot and would’ve presumably failed the marksmanship test to stay on the force. And so, when that came up in an episode, he eventually decided to have someone else pose as him and qualify on the pistol range – a choice which IIRC he never expressed any regret about, since IIRC he never actually wound up having to shoot anyone.
I seem to remember it happening on one of the early seasons of 24. They have captured a terrorist who won’t talk, they know another attack is planned but have no leads, so they decide: do we torture him for information? They’re on borrowed time, of course, so they decide to go ahead with the torture (as I recall, injecting him with something that makes his nerves register searing pain, but no physical damage). As I recall, they do get useful information, and beyond the “now we have become what we are fighting against”, which passes quickly, I don’t remember repercussions.
Don Draper lives through all of Mad Men under a stolen identity he used to take an early discharge from Korea and it never really comes back to bite him. It’s a plot point now and then but never really blows up in his face and the handful of people who do find out are largely ambivalent. That’s an overarching plot point though so maybe it doesn’t qualify per the OP.
Closer to the OP would be when Joan sleeps with a potential client to win a contract for the firm (and with the firm’s knowledge). Don obviously has a strong moral objection to Joan prostituting herself but she goes ahead with it and not only helps save the firm but also ultimately becomes a millionaire because of it. In your face, morality!
I was going to come in for the second one. Spoilers to follow:
The good guys were losing a devastating war; the good guys tried to bring in a 3rd party to join the war on their side (the Romulans) by generating fake evidence that the bad guys were about to attack the 3rd party; the 3rd party didn’t believe the evidence, but unbeknownst to the main good guy, one of his allies had planted a bomb on the 3rd party representative’s ship, killing him, and successfully making it appear that the bad guys had assassinated the 3rd party and tried to destroy the (fake) evidence, and thus successfully bringing the 3rd party into the war on the side of the good guys.
IIRC, Batman uses the device that makes cellphones into sonic surveillance cameras (or something like that) against the warnings of Luscious Fox, and it works.
Person B could be the Devil or his emissary attempting to lure Person A into soul default, a scenario that has played out predictably many times.
In the 1972 film adaptation of the famous Gothic novel, The Monk, things play out a bit differently, with the main character’s decision to sell his soul saving him completely. This is not how the novel ends.
“Now, Brigadier, I must bid hail and farewell. I shouldn’t even be here at all. I’m not exactly breaking the laws of time but I am bending them a little.”
There was an episode of WKRP where a photographer gets nudes of Jennifer and tried to blackmail her. IIRC, Johnny suggests they “Watergate it”. I think he says something like, “I’m just putting this out there to get it out of the way so we can move on to more serious ideas.” Again, IIRC (and, jeez, it’s been years since I saw it) they do get the photos that way. I forget if that resolves the blackmail problem entirely, though.